Essex County herald. [volume] (Guildhall, Vt.) 1873-1964, 1887-09-09

TEXT: $50 God created man IN His olUn
image, the image of God created He him,
male and female created He them. n-Genesis
/, "a.
In other words, God who can make no mis-
take, made man and woman for a specific
work, and to move in particular sphCres-man
to be regnant in his realm; woman to be domi-
nant in hers. The boundary line between
Italy and Switzerland, between England and
Scotland, is not more thoroughly marked
than this distinction between the empire
masculine and the empire feminine. SO en-
tirely dissimilar are the fields to which God
called them, that you can no more compare
them than you can oxygen and hydrogen,
water and grass, trees and stars All this
talk about the superiority of one sex TO the
other sex is an everlasting waste of ink and
speech. A jeweler may have a scale SO
delicate that he can weigh the dust of dia-
monds; but where are the scales so delicate
that he can weigh in them affection against
affectlon, sentiment against sentiment,
thought against thought, soul against soul,
mans world against a womans world!
You come out with your stereotyped
remark, the man is superior to wo-
on my desk the swarthy, iron-typed
thunderbolted writings of Harriet Martineau
and Elizabeth Browning and George Eliot
You come on with your stereotyped remark
about woman's superiority to man in the item
of Affection but | ask you where was there
more capacity to love than in John the
Disciple and Robert McCheyne the Scotch
man, and John Summeriield the Methodist
and Henry Martin the missionary The heart
OF those men was so large that after you
had rolled into it two hemispheres there
was room still left to marshal the
hosts of heaven and set up the throne
of the eternal Jehovah. / deny to man
the throne intellectual. deny to woman the
throne ahectionaL No human phraseology
will ever define the spheres while there is
an intuition by which we know when a man
is in his realm, and when women is in her
realm and when either of them is out of it,
No bungling legislature ought to attempt to
make'a definition, or to say: "This is the line
and that is the line" My theory is that if
woman wants to vote she ought to vote,
and that if a man wants to embroider and
keep house, he ought to be allowed to en-
broider and keep house. There are masculine
women and there are effeminate men, My
theory is, that you have no right to interfere
with any ones doing anything that is right
eous. Albany and Washington might as well
decree by legislation how high a brown
thrasher should fly, or how deep a trout
should plunge, as to try to seek out the
height or the depth of woman's duty The
question of capacity will settle finally the
whole question, the whole subject. When a
woman is prepared to preach, she will preach,
and neither Conference nor Presbytery can
hinder her. When woman is prepared to
move in highest commercial spheres, she will
have great influence on the Exchange, and
no boards of trade can hinder her. l want
woman to understand that heart and brain
can overly any barrier that politicians may
set up, and that nothing can keep her back or
Keep her down but the question ofincapacity.
There are women, | know, of most undesir-
nh ntYYrA
country-having no homes of their own, or
forsaking their own homes--t talking about
their rights; and we know very well that they
themselves are fit neither to vote nor fit to
keep house. Their mission seems to be to hu-
initiate the two sexes at the thought of what
any one of us might become. No one would
want to live under the laws that such women
would enact, or to have cast upon society the
children that such women would raise But
shall show you this morning that the best
rights that woman can own, she already has
in her possession; that her position in this
country at this time is not one of commisera-
tlon, but one of congratulation; that the
grandeur and power OF her realm have never
yet been appreciated; that she sits to-day on
throne SO high, that all the thrones of earth
piled on top of each other would
not make for her a footstool. Here is the
platform on which she stands. Away down
below it are the ballot-box and the CONGRESS;
ional assemblage and the Legislative hail.
Woman always has voted and always will
vote. Our great .grandfathers thought they
were by their votes putting Washington into
the presidential chair. No His mother, by
the principles she taught him, and by the
habits she inculcated made him President 1t
was Christian mothers hand dropping the
ballot when Lord Bacon wrote, and Newtor
philosophical, and Alfred the Great gov
erned, and Jonathan Edwards Numbered O
mr. ant 70 H.,
have been in high political station who woulc
have been insufficient to stand the test
to which their moral principle was put haC
1t not been for wife's voice that encouraged
them to do right and a wife's prayer that
sounded louder than the clamor of partisan
ship! Why, my friends, the right of suffer
age, as we men exercise it, seems to be {
feeble thing You, Christian man, com,
up to the ballot-box and you drop your vote
Right after you comes libertine or a sot-
the offscouring of the street-and he drop
his vote; and his vote counteracts yours Blu
if in the quiet of home life daughter by he
Christian demeanor, a wife by her industry
mother by her faithfulness, casts vote II
the right direction, then nothing can resist it
and the influence of that vote will throt
through the eternites
MY chief anxiety then Is, not that woman
have 9th n righfc nccnrda' hnr. h.A ~, ,a+ ~ls
by the grace OF God, rise up to the apprecia
tion of the glorious rights she already po;
seSses This morning | shall only have tim
to speak of one grand and all-abjorbint
right that every woman has, and that is t
make home happy. That realm no one he
ever disputed with her. Men may come hon
at noon or at night, and they tarry con
paratively little while; but she, all day Ions
governs it, beautfies it, sanctiies it. 1t
within her power to make it the most attrat
tive place on earth. 1t is the only calm han
Dor in this world. You know as we'll as Ok
that this outside world and the buSnes esS worlt
is along scene of jostle and contention. Th
man who has dollar struggles to keep it; I'll
man who has it not struggles to getit Price
up. Prices down. Losses. Cams. Misrel
reservations. Gougings. Underselling. Blu,
ers depreclating statesmen exaggeratini
Tenants seeking less rents landlords d
about office. Men who are in trying to kee
in men out trying to get in. Slips. Tumble
Defalcations. Panics Catastrophes.
woman thank God you have home, an
that you may be queen in it. Better be thel
than wear Victoria's coronet Better /
there than carry the purse of Princes
Your abode may be humble but you can, b
your faith in God and your cheerfulness o
demeanor, gild it with splendors such as q
upholsterer's hand never yet iindled. TheI
are abodes in the city-humble, two stories
four plain, unpapered rooms; undeslrab
neighborhood and yet there is ms
here this morning who would die on tn
threshold rather than surrender
Why 1t is home Whenever he thin
of it, he sees angels of God hoverir
around it, The ladders of heaven ara Il
down to that house. Over the child's rouq
crib there are the chantings of angels lii
those that broke over Bethlehem. tits HON
These children may come up after Will
and they may win high position, and TIN
may have an afIluent residence; but they W
not until their dying day forget that hunt
roof, under which their father rested, al
their mother sang, and their sisters playe
Oh, if you would gather up all tender mel
ories, all the lights and shades of the heal